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An adventure in getting the voices from my head to paper.

“Be Stubborn About Your Goals and Flexible About Your Methods”

Let’s talk about goals everyone.

Until about 5 years ago or so, whenever I sat down and wrote it was with the attitude of “I’ll get to it when I get to it.” I didn’t have plans, didn’t really have any push to accomplishing anything in any reasonable amount of time. It was a hobby, a passion. Something to do because I couldn’t do anything else.

I didn’t understand the world of the writer. At that time, writers were those idols that I would have really loved to be but I had never looked into what it took to be a writer or author. I had no idea what the process was to get published, didn’t know what agents were or what the big deal was about them. Basically I was ignorant. That newbie hobbyist that thought it would be easy, not work.

I had a reality check about five years ago – conveniently from my husband when he wanted to know what I was doing with my life, he didn’t like to see me floundering – and I finally looked into this passion of mine to see what it took to be successful.

It takes work. A lot of work.

I realized I needed to spend time learning my craft, learning the way things work in the industry. I needed to write more and more often. I needed to set goals for myself to keep myself going.

I’ve always been a fan of to-do lists. They help to get and keep me centered. They help me set and reach my goals. Things to accomplish with an – hopefully – attainable time frame. Flexibility is key, as the quote in my title suggests. Life can get in the way, there isn’t much to do about that even if you plan for it. Things happen to derail the plans you make. There are also things that happen to make things easier to accomplish.

There is another quote I like that I found on goals: “It will hurt. It will take time. It will require dedication. It will require willpower. You will need to make healthy decisions. It requires sacrifice. You will need to push your body to its max. There will be temptation. But, I promise you, when you reach your goal, it’s worth it.”

I almost think this may be more geared toward someone setting weight loss goals, just based on the wording, but I think it fits very well with any goal.

Some goals hurt, in the doing and the accomplishing. You’ve got to reach for the stars and push yourself through your comfort zone so we to reach them.

Dedicate yourself to your goals. Make dreams worth accomplishing and then sit back and learn what it takes to get there. Dedicate your life to making your dreams come true.

Willpower. Push yourself. Start easy and add the difficult. Where there is a will there is a way.

Sacrifice. Look into yourself and determine what is and isn’t worth sacrificing to reach your goals. Give up watching one TV show so you can get an hour of writing in? Not to hard. Giving up a major family event? Definitely harder.

Will it be worth it in the end? I would say yes. Dreams and goals are amazing things. They can change as we change. You’ve got to decide if it’s worth it to you.

So, my goals.

Like I said before, to-do lists are my starting. With all the outlining I have been doing, I’ve also been putting together to-do lists for each story as well. This gives me an idea of the things I need accomplish and the best order to accomplish them in.

Some things I get done quicker than others, some take longer. I also try to make sure that I have several different things that I can be working on because if I get stuck on one thing, I don’t want to just sit idly by waiting for inspiration to come.

For this post I wanted to give you some examples of the types goals I have. Here are some of the goals that I want to try and accomplish in 2016 (do I dare call them resolutions?):

• Get at least one additional full length novel first draft finished. I would love to say I want to get more than one, but I know my limits and life, so I will set low and reach for the stars.

• Start a schedule for blogging that gives me breathing room – I’ll shoot for at least one post a week, but would love to get to maybe a Monday, Wednesday and Friday routine. I need to find something that can keep me going on this. My problem is I get excited but run out of ideas.

• Determine an actual accomplishable word count goal for each week. Daily would be pushing it due to full time job requirements. Try to set aside a chunk of time to devote to writing.

• Get together a list of possible agents and start querying Goddess Born.

• Get my writing space re-organized and make sure it stays devoted to writing. It kind of got overwhelmed by other life stuff over the last couple years.

All of these things are totally easily accomplished. I just have 10 months to get that done!